Flowering…

Hitodama de
yuku kisan ja
natsa no har

Now as a spirit
I shall roam
The summer fields
~ Hokusai – written just before his death.
______________Thoughts:
It has been a bit longer than usual since I have put an entry in, I have been working on a couple of books and a whole bunch of art for one of those books (20 plus illustrations!). My health has been improving, although I gained a bit of weight whilst recovering from my operation, but on the whole, happy as a rabbit.

There is a lot in this entry, I guess I am making up for lost time with it. Some great music from one of my favourite french shoe gaze outfits, Dead Horse One, with some pertinent info on Radio EarthRites, along with a very beautiful video, A quote from Alan Watts that has been rattling around my head for almost a month, an excerpt from The Practice of the Wild, Sufi/Arabic Poetry, and more music. The usual ball of wax of culture and image.

I hope this finds you well, and enjoying summer, or winter, depending on which part of the globe you are.

Here is to explorations,
Love,
G
______________
On The Menu:
Dead Horse One: Season Of Mist
Radio EarthRites Updates
A Bit Of Beauty
The Big Bang
The Practice Of The Wild/Excerpt
Poetry: Hashish/Hasheesh
Dead Horse One..Insight
________
Dead Horse One: Season Of Mist
________Radio EarthRites Updates:
We are running 2 shows now, “The Dialogue Of Dreams” Mix, & “The Cosmology Of Joy” Remix on alternating days. This is a new approach, giving more variety and soundscapes

We are looking to upgrade the station from 2Gb to 10Gb of content. That will double our fees, but it will open the station up to more shows, spoken word hours, greater programming variety and much more.

If you feel like supporting us, why not pledge a $1, $3, $5, $10, or? dollars a month for awhile? Cheaper than what many of us spend on coffee or beer a day, and Radio EarthRites is there for ya 24/7/365. Your support of Radio EarthRites would be appreciated!
Please share out the station to your friends, your co-workers and compatriots.
Cheers,
G

Tuesday: The Dialogue Of Dreams: 12:00AM-12:00PM
Wednesday: The Cosmology Of Joy Remix: 12:00AM-12:00PM
Thursday: The Dialogue Of Dreams: 12:00AM-12:00PM
Friday: The Cosmology Of Joy Remix: 12:00AM-12:00PM
Saturday: The Dialogue Of Dreams: 12:00AM-12:00PM
Sunday: The Cosmology Of Joy Remix : 12:00AM-12:00PM

The Big Bang…
“It’s like you took a bottle of ink and you threw it at a wall. Smash! And all that ink spread. And in the middle, it’s dense, isn’t it? And as it gets out on the edge, the little droplets get finer and finer and make more complicated patterns, see? So in the same way, there was a big bang at the beginning of things and it spread. And you and I, sitting here in this room, as complicated human beings, are way, way out on the fringe of that bang. We are the complicated little patterns on the end of it. Very interesting. But so we define ourselves as being only that. If you think that you are only inside your skin, you define yourself as one very complicated little curlique, way out on the edge of that explosion. Way out in space, and way out in time. Billions of years ago, you were a big bang, but now you’re a complicated human being. And then we cut ourselves off, and don’t feel that we’re still the big bang. But you are. Depends how you define yourself. You are actually–if this is the way things started, if there was a big bang in the beginning– you’re not something that’s a result of the big bang. You’re not something that is a sort of puppet on the end of the process. You are still the process. You are the big bang, the original force of the universe, coming on as whoever you are. When I meet you, I see not just what you define yourself as–Mr so-and- so, Ms so-and-so, Mrs so-and-so–I see every one of you as the primordial energy of the universe coming on at me in this particular way. I know I’m that, too. But we’ve learned to define ourselves as separate from it. ”

Wildness
So we can say that New York City and Tokyo are “natural” but not “wild.” They do not deviate from the laws of nature, but they are habitat so exclusive in the matter of who and what they give shelter to, and so intolerant of other creatures, as to be truly odd. Wilderness is a place where the wild potential is fully expressed, a diversity of living and nonliving beings flourishing according to their own sorts of order. In ecology we speak of “wild systems. “When an ecosystem is fully functioning, all the members are present at the assembly. To speak of wilderness is to speak of wholeness. Human beings came out of that wholeness, and to consider the possibility of reactivating membership in the Assembly of All Beings is in no way regressive.

By the sixteenth century the lands of the Occident, the countries of Asia, and all the civilizations and cities from the Indian subcontinent to the coast of North Africa were becoming ecologically impoverished. The people were rapidly becoming nature-illiterate. Much of the original vegetation had been destroyed by the expansion of grazing or agriculture, and the remaining land was of no great human economic use, “waste,” mountain regions and deserts. The lingering larger animals—big cats, desert sheep, serows, and such managed to survive by retreating to the harsher habitats. The leaders of these civilizations grew up with less and less personal knowledge of animal behavior and were no longer taught the intimate wide ranging
plant knowledge that had once been universal. By way of tradeoff they learned “human management,” administration, rhetorical skills. Only the most marginal of the paysan, people of the land, kept up practical plant and animal lore and memories of the old ways. People who grew up in towns or cities, or on large estates, had less chance to learn how wild systems work. Then major blocks of citified mythology (Medieval Christianity and then the “Rise of Science”) denied first soul, then consciousness, and finally even sentience to the natural world. Huge numbers of Europeans, in the climate of a nature-denying mechanistic ideology, were losing the opportunity for direct experience of nature.

A new sort of nature-traveler came into existence: men who went out as resource scouts, financed by companies or aristocratic families, penetrating the lightly populated lands of people who lived in and with the wilderness. Conquistadores and priests. Europe had killed off the wolves and bears, deforested vast areas, and overgrazed the hills. The search for slaves, fish, sugar, and precious metals ran over the edge of the horizon and into Asia, Africa, and the New World. These overrefined and warlike states once more came up against wild nature and natural societies: people who lived without Church or State. In return for gold or raw sugar, the white men had to give up something of themselves: they had to look into their own sense of what it meant to be a human being, wonder about the nature of hierarchy, ask if life was worth the honor of a king, or worth gold. (A lost and starving man stands and examines the nicked edge of his sword and his frayed Spanish cape in a Florida swamp.)

Some, like Nuno de Guzman, became crazed and sadistic. “When he began to govern this province, it contained 25,000 Indians, subjugated and peaceful. Of these he has sold 10,000 as slaves, and the others, fearing the same fate, have abandoned their villages” (Todorov, 1985, 134). Cortes, the conqueror of Mexico, ended up a beaten, depressed beggar-to-the-throne. Alvar Nunez, who for eight years walked naked across Texas and New Mexico, came out transformed into a person of the New World. He had rejoined the old ways and was never the same again. He gained a compassionate heart, a taste for self-sufficiency and simplicity, and a knack for healing. The types of both Guzman and Nunez are still among us. Another person has also walked onto the Noh stage of Turtle Island history to hold hands with Alvar Nunez at the far end of the process—Ishi the Yahi, who walked into civilization with as much desperation as Nunez walked out of it. Nunez was the first European to encounter North America and its native myth-mind, and Ishi was the last Native American to fully know that mind—and he had to leave it behind. What lies between those two brackets is not dead and gone. It is perennially within us, dormant as a hard-shelled seed, awaiting the fire or flood that awakes it again.
_____________Poetry: Hashish/Hasheesh

Haydar’s Emerald cup

Give up wine and drink from the wine of Haydar,
Amber scented, green the color of emerald.
It is presented to you by a Turkish gazelle, slender,
Swaying like a willow bough, delicate.
In his hand, you would think, as he turns it,
It is like the traces of down on a rosy cheek.
The slightest breeze makes it reel,
And it flutters toward the coolness of the continuing breeze.
The grayish pigeons coo upon its branches in the morning.
And the cadences of the warbling doves cause it emotion.
It has many meanings the like of which are unknown to wine.
Therefore do not listen with respect to it to the words of the old censor.
It is virginal, not deflowered by rain,
Nor has it ever been squeezed by feet or hands,
No Christian priest has ever played around with a cup containing it,
Nor have they ever communion from its cask to any heretic’s soul…
Nothing has been said expressly from Malik to declare it unlawful,
Nor is the hadd penalty for its use… prescribed…
Thus take it with the sharp edge of steel.
Stay the hands of worry with kyff and achieve joyful repose.
Do not lightly postpone the day of joy till tomorrow.
‘The days will show you what you were ignorant of,
And someone for who you did not provide (to serve as your
messenger) will bring you the news’

– medieval Sufi poet, Ibn al-A’ma
_____The Secret of Hashish

The secret of hashish lifts up the spirit
In an ascent of disembodied thinking.
It is pure spirit. Free are its confines
From worries. Only the elect may taste it.
Hashish involves no sin. You are not punished.
Their wine makes you forget all meanings. Our herb
Recalls the mysteries of godly beauty.
You can obtain the green stuff without haggling.
You do not need much gold and silver for it.
Tucked in a handkerchief it can be carried.
No cup is needed if you wish to use it.
You find yourself clean, virtuous and witty.
Bright too and free from all annoying dullness.
The body is not tired eliminating
And vomiting like an inflated wine skin.
In times both good and bad you may enjoy it.
It is no hindrance to nights of devotion.

– al-Is-Irdi
_______Light your pipe

Smoke your pipe:
The Almighty will give you peace.
Smoke and drink small sips of tea;
The Almighty will free you
from your tribulations.
Smoke and breath deeply,
He who is jealous will know misery

__________Dead Horse One..Insight
__________“Be like the flower that gives its fragrance to even the hand that crushes it.”
― Ali ibn Abi Talib

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One Reply to “Flowering…”

Blessings on your journey into your projects dear Gwyllm. Looking forward to fallowing more hear on this amazing site! Moving through Autumn, winter soon comes, such a great time to get projects done! Peace and have a great day!